Redmine draw.io plugin

draw.io is free online diagramming tool.

This plugin will allow embedding draw.io diagrams into Redmine wiki pages, issues descriptions and issue notes.

Requirements

• Requires Redmine v2.6+. Tested with Redmine v3.1.4, v3.2.4 and v3.3.2.

Installation

• install redmine_drawio plugin:

  cd $REDMINE_HOME/plugins
  git clone https://github.com/mikitex70/redmine_drawio.git
  

• restart Redmine to load the new plugin

• for macro drawio_attach make sure to enable Rest API of Redmine

• for macro drawio_dmsf make sure to install the DMSF plugin and to enable the module for the project

• if you have troubles with the embedded editor using Internet Explorer, try a more recent version (Internet Explorer 11 should work fine) or, better, use another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome.

Usage

There are three macros that can be used to embed diagrams in wiki pages/issues; use what best fits your needs.

drawio macro

This macro draws diagrams saved in attachments. This is for compatibility with 0.1.x versions of the plugin and is now a bit obsolete. To use it:

• save your draw.io diagram locally and upload it as attachment to a Wiki or issue page.

• in Wiki (or issue) pages use the drawio macro to load the widget, specifying the name of the attachment. For example:

  {{drawio(activity.xml, options)}}
  

• the following macro options are available (default values are shown):

  • lightbox=false : enable lightbox usage
  • resize=false : enable zoom control box
  • zoom=100 : initial zoom of diagram (percentage of original diagram)
  • fit=true : fit page width (only if resize=false)
  • hilight=#0000ff : color to hilight hyperlinks

With this macro diagrams are drawn using SVG (or maybe Canvas) so they are interactive: they are navigable, they respond to over and click actions. Hyperlinks can be used to navigate to other items.

This macro render diagrams as SVG, so diagrams are interactive and navigable (link can be used to navigate to other pages).

This macro is now obsolete: you can now use SVG diagrams with the other two macros (draio_attach and drawio_dmsf) but you must import the the diagram in the draw.io editor and then export as SVG with an included copy of the diagram (see the Export as SVG function of the draw.io editor).

drawio_attach macro

This macro handles diagrams saved as attachments of issues or wiki pages.

With this macro the attachments are in PNG+XML, a special format consisting in an PNG image of the diagram plus the XML diagram source embeded as a field of the image.

With an.svg attachment name extension the image format is handled as SVG+XML; like the PNG+XML, this is an SVG image with an embedded XML source of the diagram (the diagram must be created with the draw.io editor, normal SVG are displayed but cannot be edited).

Usage is very simple:

• make sure REST API are enabled in Redmine global settings; this is need to be able to save diagrams as attachments

• in Wiki or issue pages use the drawio_attach macro to specify the name of attachment containing the diagram. For example:

  {{drawio_attach(myDiagram)}}

  If the diagram doesn't exists, a predefined diagram will be used as a placeholder, like this:

  

  Double click on the diagram to start editing with the embedded editor. When you save the the diagram the editor will close, the diagram will be saved in a new attachment and the reference in the wiki/issue page is updated.

  The diagram attachments are versioned by suffixing the name with a counter. This is necessary because is not possible to update an existing attachment. Moreover, is not possible to delete attachments throught rest API (seems to be possible from Redmine 3.3.0, but I need to experiment), so the old versions of an attachment must be explicitly (manually) deleted from the Redmine web interface.

• the following macro options are available (default values are shown):

  • size=number : force image width, in pixels (default, show in original size)

In the toolbar editor there is a button with icon that can be used to insert a macro for a new diagram to be saved as attachment (for lazy people).

drawio_dmsf macro

This macro handles diagrams saved in the DMSF repository as PNG+XML or SVG+XML images. The DMSF module must be enabled for the project to be able to use this macro. Usage is very simple:

• enable the WebDAV functionality of the DMSF plugin in Read/Write mode; this is necessary to be able to save the diagram from the embedded editor. If you prefer you can disable WebDAV after all editings are done.

• in Wiki or issue pages use the drawio_dmsf macro to specify the path of the diagram, relative to the DMSF documents of the current project. For example:

  {{drawio_dmsf(diagrams/myDiagram)}}

  The path is optional, but if specified then it must exists in the DMSF managed repository. If the diagram doesn't exists a predefined diagram will be used as a placeholder, like this:

  

  Double click on the diagram to start editing with the embedded editor. When you save the the diagram the editor will close, the diagram will be saved (versioned) in the specified DMSF documents path for the current project, and the diagram will be automatically updated.

• the following macro options are available (default values are shown):

  • size=number : force image width, in pixels (default, show in original size)

Like for the drawio_attach macro, in the toolbar editor there is a button with icon that can be used to insert a macro for a new diagram to be saved as DMSF document.

Some note on the drawio editor

Someone can be concerned about security in sending own diagrams to the draw.io site.

The diagrams aren't sent to draw.io for editing/rendering, but all the operations are done by the browser using only Javascript and HTML5. The only things loaded externally are the scripts and the editor page, when the diagram editor is opened. The diagram source remains local to browser/redmine site.

Using a personal installation of draw.io

If you like, you can configure this plugin to use your own installation of the draw.io site.

The build of the war file is a bit problematic because the drawio macro needs a script dinamically produced by the EmbedServlet2 servlet, which is deployed in the draw.io site but not built from the default sources.

This servlet is excluded from build because of a missing library from Google, maybe because of copyright issues.

If you are planning to use only the drawio_attach and drawio_dmsf macros you can use the source as is without troubles, but if you want/need the drawio macro it is necessary to apply the embed2js.patch patch (included in this plugin sources).

The build steps are:

  git clone https://github.com/jgraph/draw.io.git
  cd draw.io
  patch -p1 < PATH_TO_DRAWIO_PLUGIN/embed2js.patch
  cd etc/build
  ant war
  cd ../../build

If the build ends without errors, in the build directory you should find a working version of the war file that you can deploy in your favourite servlet container (like Tomcat); be sure to enable the HTTPS protocol because is is required.

Then enter your Redmine installation, go to Administration -> Plugins -> Redmine Drawio plugin, click on the Configure link and then specify your address for the draw.io site.

Known issues

• Diagrams are rendered on the browser so they aren't visible inside a PDF export. As workaround you can print the web page as PDF document (easy with Linux, a bit more problematic in Windows), or export the diagram in PNG format and include it as image.

• There can be a browser limit on the embedded diagram size. For example Opera 11 limits Data URIs size to 65000 characters. If the diagram is too big, use the draio macro to render the diagram from an XML source.

• The drawio_attach macro doesn't completly work with issue notes: Redmine APIs allow to create new issue notes, but not to change them, so the issue note must be changed manually. As alternative use the drawio and drawio_dmsf macros, which work fine.

TODO

• Allow specify diagrams from other other sources:

  • use a file managed by the DMSF plugin
  • embed diagram as macro body
  • use GoogleDrive, Dropbox and OneDrive as possible diagram sources.
  • implement tests
  • make diagram images exportable in PDF

Contributing

Any code contribution is well accepted. There are only a few rules that I would like to be respected to easy merging:

• work on develop branch and leave the master branch untouched. This is importat to keep the released versions stable.
• I would prefer comments in the style used by gitchangelog; this will simplify generation of the CHANGELOG.md. It isn't fondamental, I can edit comments and insert prefixes, or edit manually the CHANGELOG.md, but it would be nice if you can help me.